Holding steady on salaries

Sunday

Mar 1, 2009 at 12:01 AMMar 1, 2009 at 11:58 AM

Gene Smith moved swiftly last year to make Jim Tressel one of the top-10 paid coaches in college football. But the Ohio State athletic director is not inclined to join the new rage of large salary upgrades for coordinators and assistants.

Gene Smith moved swiftly last year to make Jim Tressel one of the top-10 paid coaches in college football. But the Ohio State athletic director is not inclined to join the new rage of large salary upgrades for coordinators and assistants.

"We're just not going there," Smith said.

The outbreak has been confined primarily to the Southeastern Conference -- the initial hot spot being Tennessee, where the Volunteers are shelling out more than $2.5 million next year for four assistants.

Those moves were followed in "keep up with the Joneses" fashion by Auburn, which reportedly will pay four new assistants more than $300,000 each to help new coach Gene Chizik. Florida, winner of two of the past three national titles, is said to be looking to boost the pay of its top assistants, and there have been flare-ups spotted at Texas, Washington and elsewhere.

At Tennessee, new coach Lane Kiffin -- poised to reap $2 million this year, modest by head coach standards -- hired his father, Monte, away from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as defensive coordinator for $1.2 million per year. By all accounts, that's easily a record salary for a college assistant.

The Volunteers then signed defensive line coach and recruiting coordinator Ed Orgeron, the former coach at Mississippi, for $650,000. Offensive coordinator Jim Chaney will get $380,000 and defensive specialist Lance Thompson will receive $350,000.

That leaves four Tennessee assistants making decidedly more than OSU offensive coordinator Jim Bollman ($275,400), defensive coordinator Jim Heacock ($260,510), assistant head coach/receivers coach Darrell Hazell ($236,250) and co-defensive coordinator Luke Fickell ($183,600) made the past 12 months. The other five members of the OSU coaching staff made between $162,000 and $176,000 each.

The OSU assistants' contracts are now up for review and renewal. Though each is considered on an individual basis, the coaches can count on Smith not to jump on the big-bump bandwagon -- and not only because the athletic department has tightened its belt while facing a possible shortfall of as much as $1.2 million by the end of its fiscal year June 30.

"For one thing, I think it's not right," Smith said of the high salaries. "And two, financially it's not being responsible with the dollars that our fans provide us."

Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton made no apologies for his moves, even if his university is facing $100 million in budget cuts for the coming year. When the Vols opted to fire longtime coach Phil Fulmer and bring in Lane Kiffin, they also decided to give Kiffin the tools he needed to be successful. Evidently, that included luring his father from the NFL and other coaches from lucrative positions. Football, after all, generates more than 80 percent of Tennessee's $87.8 million athletic budget.

"I think it makes sense for us to spend some of that money back on football to make sure that football is still strong both at the University of Tennessee and in our league," Hamilton told GoVols.com.

"We also need football to be strong here because it has such a significant effect on our financial model for all of our sports in funding so many other sports, which allows us then not to draw dollars from the university like so many athletic programs in America, particularly in a difficult financial time like we're facing right now."

Athletic budgets are independent of the universities and self-sustaining. Ohio State, with 36 varsity sports and a $115 million budget, doesn't have as much excess money to play with as, say, Tennessee, with 20 sports; or Georgia, with 21 sports and a budget of more than $76 million; or Florida, with 19 sports and an $83 million budget; or Texas, with 20 sports and a $101 million budget.

"But at the end of the day, just because you have those dollars doesn't mean that you change the market like they're changing it, trying to compete with the NFL," Smith said. "I don't understand it."

Tennessee backers argue their combined package for football coaches is just fourth-highest in the SEC behind Louisiana State, Alabama and Florida. But that ranking is skewed by the fact that the majority of compensation for head coaches such as LSU's Les Miles, Alabama's Nick Saban and Florida's Urban Meyer comes from non-salary sources such as TV show revenues and shoe, equipment and apparel contracts.

It's the same for Tressel, whose compensation will be valued at about $3.5 million this year, with only about $700,000 in salary.

Assistants don't usually have TV shows, and they have few outside income possibilities. Their salaries are generally shouldered by the athletic department, and Smith does not intend to break the bank in that regard, at least for now.

"So if a coach wants to go to another place to earn that kind of money, I'll thank them for their service," Smith said. "That's it."

tmay@dispatch.com

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.